Zelensky taps Ukraine oligarchs and US war machine for more power as he reinstalls oligarch approved ministers eager for eastern Ukraine bloodshed. State prosecutor gen. Ryaboshapka canned. US and neo-Nazi favorite Avakov not fired

“On Wednesday, March 4, the entire Ukrainian government was dismissed after the parliament (Verkhovna Rada) voted overwhelmingly to accept the resignation submitted by Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk earlier this week. Shortly thereafter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired Honcharuk’s entire cabinet. A day later, on March 5, the Verkhovna Rada passed a vote of no-confidence in the state prosecutor general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka.

Honcharuk is leaving after just six months in office, the shortest tenure of any Ukrainian prime minister in history. He is replaced by Denys Shmyhal who previously served as Deputy Prime Minister. From 2017 to 2019, Shmyhal worked as an executive at an energy firm owned byUkraine’s wealthiest billionaire oligarch,Rinat Akhmetov.Shmyhal also has close ties to [billionaire oligarch and] former President Petro Poroshenko.

Honcharuk had previously offered his resignation to President Zelensky in January after recorded conversations were leaked of Honcharuk stating that Zelensky had a “primitive” view of economics. Zelensky’s rejected that resignation offer, however, claiming the prime minster had “more work to do” for the people of Ukraine. Shortly thereafter, Zelensky reshuffled his personal staff.

In a speech on Wednesday before the Verhovna Rada, Zelensky sharply denounced the previous government, blaming it for the ongoing contraction in the industrial sector, the lack of medical and pension reforms, and the fact thatminers have gone without salariesfor months.

In a demagogic appeal to nationalist and far-right forces, he also denounced the government forallowing foreigners to take over Ukrainian company boards, stating, “With all respect to our international partners and with all appreciation for their help, the citizens of our country on governing boards of our companies are feeling like an ethnic minority.”

Several of the ministers now appointed have previously served under presidents Petro Poroshenko, Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko. All these three administrations insisted on the closest possible ties with US imperialism. They supported and were brought to power through pro-Western protest movements that were heavily funded and backed by the US.

The new foreign minister, Dmitry Kuleb, began his career under Poroshenko. In a recent interview, he stated, “In the long-term, I am for some kind of normalization of relations with Russia, but …Russia must pay a price for its aggression.” He insisted that Russia had to return Crimea “no matter how much time it will take.”

The new finance minister is Igor Umansky, who earlier served as a high-ranking official in the finance ministry under both Tymoshenko and Poroshenko. He was an advisor to Poroshenko in 2016-2019. The new minister for the occupied territories (the separatist-controlled parts of Eastern Ukraine) is Alexei Reznikov, who was part of the delegation negotiating the Minsk agreement in 2016 under Poroshenko.

Tellingly, only Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s Interior Minister, was able to keep his position in the new Cabinet of Ministers that was approved by Ukraine’s parliament Wednesday. Avakov served in the same position during the right-wing regime of former President Poroshenko. He has close ties to Washington and controls the country’s national police force and possesses well-known ties to Ukraine’s most notorious neo-Nazi militia, the Azov Battalion. A number of posts in the new government, including that of the energy minister, remain to be assigned.

The government reshuffle comes amid an enormous social and political crisis in Ukraine. In February, polls revealed that for first time since his election in April of last year that Zelensky’s own approval ratings, which at their height stood at over 70 percent, have now fallen below 50 percent. Honcharuk’s cabinet was supported by just 6 percent of Ukrainians….

Last fall, Zelensky announced the most far-reaching privatization plan in the country since the restoration of capitalism in the early 1990s. Honcharuk had been in charge of leading the privatization, and one of his decisions in office this week was to approve the transferring of a “record” 431 state-owned enterprises to a state property fund for privatization. While announcing the privatization, Honcharuk bragged that his government had sent 961 state-owned enterprises on the road to privatization “ten times higher than in the previous ten years.”